Rebels attacked an army base in Niger, killing 13 soldiers and taking at least 47 prisoners on Friday, the government said. An ethnic Tuareg group claimed responsibility, just days after it said it was behind an assault on a local airport.
The group of heavily armed rebels attacked a remote Sahara security outpost on Friday morning, ”near Mount Tazarzat, by a water hole” not far from the Libyan border, government spokesperson Mohamed Ben Omar said on national television.
In addition to the 13 soldiers killed, 30 others were wounded at the base, about 2 000km north-east of the capital, Niamey, he said. He gave no information about who the attackers were, referring to them as ”bandits”.
”The government of Niger will not be swayed in its fight against terrorism,” Omar said.
Later on Friday, the commander of the Niger Movement for Justice — an ethnic Tuareg group known by its French acronym MNJ — said his group had launched the attack in revenge ”for the fact that the president continues to refer to us as bandits and drug traffickers”.
The rebel commander, Aghali Alambo, made the comments in a radio address. Earlier this week, his group claimed responsibility for an assault on the international airport in Agadez, 740km north-east of Niamey.
He said on Friday that, in attacking the airport, the MNJ was aiming to destroy a fleet of planes used by the military to pinpoint the group’s desert hideout. Officials said, however, that no one was hurt, and the airport suffered no serious damage.
Though one of the poorest nations in the world, Niger, a former French colony has been largely peaceful since a 1999 coup in which military officers took over the government, but then ushered in elections later that year.
The Tuareg rebels are fighting for greater rights for their ethnic group. In 1990, a rebellion broke out in northern Niger in the area that is home to the blue-robed nomads. A 1995 peace accord promised greater rights to the minority, including a degree of autonomy as well as integration in the country’s armed forces and government.
The recently formed MNJ claims the rights they were promised have not materialised. – Sapa-AP